The Agape Children's Choir want their voices heard!

The election, this November 4th, will probably be the most watched in the world and the one most Americans will have voted on in the history of our nation.  Even young children have taken an interest in the politics of our country.

My daughter, who’s in third grade, has asked me who I’m going to vote for in this presidential race. She’s often spoken with distaste about our current president. I don’t know if it’s from my influence or from either of her grandmothers but she’s savvy enough to know George W. has ruined America.

Her friend, asked me the same question as well. However, as I know her parents to be staunch Republicans, her mother has a picture of George W. up in her home office,  I turned it around and asked her, who her parents were voting for instead. As we were in a bookstore at the time and a book on Obama was in front of us, I wasn’t surprised when she pointed at it and said, “Well, not him!”. Being a Democrat, I just smiled and walked away. No use debating with an 8 year-old, with possible repercussions from her parents.

However, 8 year-olds do want to be heard, even if they are influenced by their parents. Therefore, The Agape International Children’s Choir and Little Engine Productions have created a video called Change My World, with a non-partisan view, at encouraging voters to take an interest in our children’s future and taking their voices to the polls.

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We have always been told not to judge a book by its cover, but we are all guilty of doing it, and we are victims of others’ judgments. So if people are going to judge regardless, I might as well have a little fun with it and share my own judgments with you. In this new series, I will tell you what I think about a music artists’ choice of fashion and what it seems to say about them. Not wasting any time, I will be starting off this series with a group whose song about what they want to be when they grow up has successfully been playing in my head for the past week.

The Pussycat Dolls, whose song, “When I Grow Up,” can be heard blasting on the radio, say they are all about self-confidence and female empowerment, but what is so empowering about the way they dress?

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The effects of the Great Depression.

“Wall Street scrambles as banks teeter”, screamed the headlines of the LA Times Monday morning.

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Have you seen American Apparel’s new line, “Afrika” lately?

On first glance, it may appear that AA is trying to brand into patterns after being known for so long for  their basic cotton knitwear that comes in a plethora of colors and cuts, however, if your observation skills are in tune, it might be that AA is taking a page from the M.I.A. book of fashion. M.I.A, or Maya Arulpragasam, is known just as much for her innovative and cutting edge music as for her sense of style. While she’s singing “Paper Planes” or her first hit, “Galang,” you’ll more than likely find her clad in neon pink tights and an outrageously patterned spandex leotard, while wearing candy colored sneakers and flailing her blond streaked hair, a definite shout out to the 80s.

American Apparel, the largest clothing manufacturer in the world, an unlikely candidate to carry such loud and out there type clothing, has jumped in the M.IA. train.

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With the Halloween season right around the corner, thoughts turn towards the spooky, eerie and just plain odd. Images of skulls, witches and ghosts loom about, as this time of year brings out the mischievous childlike fun of hiding behind a façade. What most people do not know is that there is an ever-growing group of individuals out there who dress in Halloween-like costumes day in and out, all year long. What kind of grown adults don leather and felt costumes like six-year-olds ready to run out and yell trick or treat? A very unique and special group of pirates who have used their renewed love of playing dress up combined with the Pirates of the Caribbean theme to bring about joy and childlike wonder to thousands throughout the country and even world. At first glance this past-time can be easily scorned or scoffed, but with a closer look the gold that hides inside the treasure chest is revealed.

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This week on Billboard’s Hot 100 the Jonas Brothers hold the number one spot with their song, “A Little Bit Longer.” This song is from their third album, A Little Bit Longer [2008]. Their previous albums are It’s About Time [2006] and Jonas Brothers [2007].  Jonas Brothers got our attention but it wasn’t quite IT. The third album was the charm, as this time around the bros are off the charts and the object of teenage girls’ swooning across the nation. The Brothers are all Evangelical Christians, were home schooled by their mom and all of them wear purity rings. Sorry, groupies, they’re worth waiting for!

‘A Little Bit Longer’ was written by Nick Jonas about his experience with diabetes. The song depicts being told to wait longer at a doctor’s office for a diagnosis. He refers to high and low blood sugars in the chorus and that he’s still waiting on a cure.

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Gnarls Barkley graced us with their presence not long ago in July at the Hollywood Bowl and you’ve probably been living under a rock if you haven’t realized that they’ve become an interesting phenomenon since their breakout single, “Crazy.” Who can reject the sounds of Cee-Lo’s soulful vocals over DJ Danger Mouse’s tight beats? As they dress up as Napoleon Dynamite and Pedro or Cheech and Chong, most can’t help but be intrigued with their antics.

Their second studio album might have lacked in the dance anthems that powered St. Elsewhere, but the appropriately titled The Odd Couple still provided us with the same strong and soulful storytelling lyrics. This aspect is uniquely presented in their latest video, “Who’s Gonna Save My Soul?” Directed by Chris Milk, the video’s concept and imagery may be disgusting and absurd, yet it is also sultry and heartfelt. See for yourself.

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Ideas are the source of all actions. Once we adopt ideas they form the basis of how we live and how we support events in our community. “Ideas shape the course of history,” said John Maynard Keynes.
They are things that make us feel great, inspire us, or crush us. We can roll them around, play with them, or hush them up and censor them.

Like businesses, churches and political parties use marketing techniques to promote ideas. In ancient days, Aristotle wrote about rhetoric and set the foundation for modern marketing which shows us how to segment groups by the way people adopt ideas and products. Once we understand these different groups, we can communicate effectively with them and persuade them to buy.

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They’re at it again. On newsstands now, at 7-11s and grocery store check-outs all across the country, you can get an eyeful of your favorite celebrity in a bikini. Yup, some photographer stalked them to their vacation spot, vied with some other photographers to get the most unflattering angle and then plastered it on a magazine cover for everyone to judge. The photos get lots of money, the celebrities are mortified, privacy is invaded and vacations are ruined. All for the misguided idea that the average Joe or Jane will feel better about themselves when they flip through pages and pages of celebrity body flaws while waiting to purchase their sodas and microwave burritos. Hmmm.

The offenders right this moment are Star Magazine and InTouch Weekly but they all have this exact same cover at one time or another. Because, let’s face it, it sells magazines. I’ve looked at them and so have you. We’re fascinated to see these supposedly perfect people in a more human light.

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Arriving in the Beijing Capital International Airport for the 29th Olympiad with excitement up to my forehead, I was still prepared to deal with huge crowds, long lines, and impatient vendors. What I found was a sense of world unity and camaraderie that is rarely seen these days; one in which, Chinese natives, or anyone for that matter, could wear the colors of another country without irony or malice, but simply enjoy what life had to offer at that particular point in time.

Being an LA native, I have dealt with all the above mentioned nuisances, but hearing there was going to be “soooo many people” and that it was going to be “soooo crowded” didn’t really help in assuaging any concerns of mine. But after arriving and taking a cab to my hotel, I found Beijing to be less crowded and dense than I had imagined. Traffic was about what one might find here in LA, but it never took more than thirty minutes to get around the city; and the pollution levels I had heard about seemed to be that of an urban legend. True, the government did a lot of cleaning up for these Olympics (instituting odd-even license plate traffic restrictions, closing down street vendors, etc.) in order to present a cleaner and more welcoming China, but that was not going to take away from my enjoyment of the city.

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Io Echo… echo… echo… Even their name has resonance. Seeing Io Echo is always a good time and last Thursday was no exception.

By the time I arrived at Silverlake Lounge, I was catching the last part of the set by our new friends, The Oohlas. The crowd was a little thin for an Io Echo show but I assumed the best. Their shows are always a full blown dance party in the end.

I wasn’t let down. After opening up with with a dark and lush but slow and bashful introduction, they exploded with “Enter the Exit,” a number with organ chords and an incredibly catchy chorus. I looked back to the audience and the bar was already twice the size it was before her first song. Looking back to the band, Io Echo was then busy with making a song quite the show in itself. Structured in a very schizophrenic tempo, this song started out with slow, deep vocals while the the guitarist and bassist slowly came up like creepy crawlies out of cemetery dirt. Then when you least expected it the driving ferocious chorus of “I’m On Fire” was released and your body was surged with endorphins. At least mine was. Bodies were shaking and grooving to the band’s concoction of goth and dance punk music but ours weren’t the only ones moving to the beat.

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I cannot emphasize how great the music scene is here for the city of angels. We seem to be having some sort of music festival every weekend. So it was no exception that we went and had our 28th Annual Sunset Junction Street Festival this weekend (August 23rd and 24th) for year 2008.

It has the feeling of the Los Feliz Street Fair; relaxed, two stages, lots of food and informational stands for good causes. However, every aspect is just kicked up a bit in its magnitude. The stages were bigger - plus one, the plethora of food choices was more extravagant, the booths were catered more to general LA rather than focused on a certain area of LA, but most of all - the line up of bands was much greater in recognition and talent.

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